Chapter 288: High-Rise of DOOM

The strange structure's architecture is pretty obvious to our dear Annita. I've been browsing her memories, and she's lived in a place or three like this before. Terrible landlords, the tenants aren't great either, and someone's always keeping pets that shouldn't be there. This place, though. It's more than it seems.

I hope she's ready for this.

Ann quietly thanked Lucia for not complaining about smells. Judging by the woman’s cheeks, she still definitely smelled it, but at least there were no comments.

Once they’d been tired out, the trio had cleaned up the best they could with lips, tongues, and hands. Still, smell didn’t come off that easily. Ann could still smell it. Sure, she was more familiar with their scents, but sex stank. Maybe a dip in the lake that… was before the crawlspace.

Fuck.

Maybe the sweat would cover up for it? They’d all been hiking and fighting since they got down here.

“You reek of sex.”

God damnit.

“Morning, Minnie,” Ann groaned.

“Like, not just smell, you are covered in it! How in the Hells does that even happen?”

“We tried tae clean up,” Kat said, starting to break down the tent. “Sorry.”

Minnie gave her a questioning look. “I’m… not upset?”

“Oh, Bren and Lucia always complain about it so we’re used to apologising. Ann’s got a really big dick and it takes a while for her to tire out or run out so we’re usually at it for like… hours or something. Honestly last night was a pretty good session, but we also needed to sleep, so we didn’t overload her libido. Ann! Crazy idea! What does that do to your stamina if we overload you? Does that reset it? Could we go on for even longer?” The look in Rosalyn’s eyes was dangerous. She had the expression like she’d found an interesting piece of a Warped she wanted to cut open.

Ann sighed. “We’ll test when we’re not stuck in a cave with someone who can smell me from a mile away when I’m freshly bathed.”

Lucia, doing her own tent breakdown, gave Ann a grateful nod. Gods, her plumage was pretty in the dim light.

Breakfast was much the same as dinner. Simple. Some dried meat, fruits, and bread coupled with water and some honey that Rowena had packed for them. They were starting to run low on the provisions the Orenous Temple had given them, which was a shame. The priesthood had really gone all in when setting them up with durable but tasty food. The dense fruit scones had been Ann’s favourite. Even if they’d accidentally gotten too dry and started to crumble, they were sweet and filling.

Ann, as usual, poured a round of coffee for everyone who wanted some, which was everyone today. Even Bren accepted a cup of the strong-smelling liquid over his usual tea.

Maybe they weren’t the only ones who’d been fucking.

Packing camp up went faster than normal. It was a temporary setup, so not much had been unloaded. After about an hour, they were ready to head out into the darkness ahead of them.

“Gods, I can smell it on myself,” Ann groaned inside her faceplate. She shoved the cover up into the helmet to get fresh air.

“How does… I will find out. You will find out, Minnie,” Minnie laughed to herself.

“Not far,” Lucia said, changing the subject bluntly.

They’d gotten back to the intersection before the wall. No pregnant spiders had been seen yet, and Ann would like to keep it that way. She’d been listening to the subtle shuffles and scrapes of cave life. None sounded like the gossamer taps and little clicks of the spider’s feet.

“And you just found a corner that way?” Minnie asked, pointing in the direction Ann and Lucia had taken the other day.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go this way. It should lead us around to another side, and if this thing is as big as it seemed, then we’ve got a better chance of an entrance.”

“The feck are we enterin’ though?” Kat asked as they set off. “Ye said it was smooth walls?”

“Yeah. Just not like I’m familiar with. You’ll see,” Ann said.

It didn’t take them long to find a wall with the strange texture. Kat and Minnie walked up to it, running their hands over the surface as Bren started taking notes.

“Ye’re right? That’s too smooth tae be like the concrete ye mentioned. Feels shaped. Definitely magic.”

“On the money there,” Minnie muttered. “There’s a subtle shifting in the layers that isn’t natural.”

“I could have told you this wasn’t natural,” Rosalyn giggled.

“You’d be surprised,” Minnie continued. “Cut blocks of this size do exist, and we can move them with magic. There’s also Graven Keep’s walls, which are just an enigma through and through. I swear some Mulsfar made them before we even settled the region. Maybe a warding artefact from the Return? Still, they’re not your normal stone edifices. Singular, gigantic stone pieces from bottom to top, with the insides built up after they were found.”

“Been in those walls enough tae confirm,” Kat nodded. “They’re creepy if ye spend too much time in ‘em. Just doesn’t feel right.”

“Kat, we have discussed this ad nauseum. That feeling is due to the wards interacting with residuals from the Seeds within all of you. Humans do not have this reaction. Any of the returned races, as we now know, will feel that faint foreboding. I imagine that it would be much more powerful now, considering our situation.”

“Aww, I wanna go visit Nolton again,” Rosalyn pouted. “He’s gotta make me a dress like Ann’s.”

Ann patted Rosalyn’s shoulder. “We’ll be fine. Still got enough Goddess power in us, right? Should counter the bad wooj.”

“Let’s keep walking,” Minnie decided, stepping away from the wall.

So they did. Ann’s eyes kept flicking over to the smooth wall as it rose from and sank back into the natural stone. It bugged her. It was too familiar.

“There!” Kat said before jogging up ahead. “An entrance!”

Sure enough, there it was. A door. An actual door. It was made of the same polished grey rock with indents arranging three rectangles along its height. The weirdest part of it was the handle. First, that it had one in the first place, and second, that it was metal. It was one of those long rods you’d see on a tempered glass door, but this was made of burnished brass, and not stainless steel. After a closer inspection, Ann found the hinges, too. It was a pull door.

“This is so weird,” she muttered, running her gauntleted fingers over the metal.

Rosalyn trotted up next to her. “Is it familiar, Ann?”

“Yeah. Gods, I’m having the words déjà vu. I’ve seen dozens of doors like this, but not made out of a rock. It’s almost like someone made a polished granite office building.”

“Well, let’s get tae what’s actually inside,” Kat said. “Ready!”

Ann stepped aside, readying herself for whatever was going to attack them.

Kat pulled the handle firmly.

The door swung open with ease. The hinges didn’t even squeak. It was the smoothest gliding door Ann had heard in months. It was as if it had been oiled yesterday.

“Clear,” Kat announced and stepped inside.

“Huh,” Ann grunted elegantly as she stepped inside. “Expected an office reception, not… huh.”

“Huh?” Lucia grunted in a way that was somehow even more confused than Ann’s utterances. “Is building. Same?”

“No, see, this is a reception area, but it’s closed off with glass.” Ann walked over to the smaller room set in the side of the larger room. “This isn’t so much reception as it is security in a lobby. Are we in an apartment building? This is fucking weird.”

As Ann took more of the area in, she was increasingly convinced that was what this was. There were metal frames for signs, posters, floor layouts. There was a metal grid with slots for mail, and sets of chairs and couches for residents and visitors to hang out on. It was a bougie as fuck apartment building reception, but that’s definitely the vibe. Maybe long-term hotel?

Her claws clicked on the stone as she padded over to the security booth with its glass facade, slot for people to pass things through, and metal circle that let them talk. They’d been in a Warped facsimile of the past with the Edmonton Seed, but this was different. This was like someone trying to re-create something from memory, and less AI-awful garbling of reality. An apartment building would have a reception of some sort, but one this upscale wouldn’t have the security glass or the mic to keep residents and staff separated. Neither would there be that weird section where a light crystal was flickering, and the stairs looked a bit run-down. Whoever made this had memories of both when they were trying to make it. Did that make it a failure, and was that why it was just sunk into the mountain?

Ann shouldered the door to security open. It was a small room. Smaller than it should have been. All that was there was what you could see from the window, as if that was all the builder knew existed. Still, there was a counter, drawers, and filing cabinets. Along the blank back wall was a row of keys, as well, which Ann swiped. If their Bultrite was in here, they’d need to get into a room, most likely. She took a bit longer to look for anything that seemed like a master key in the drawers, but came up with nothing. There wasn’t even paper.

“Alright, got keys,” Ann announced, handing them to Bren. “No clue if we’ll need them, but it beats having to break down doors.”

“People lived in places like this?” Rosalyn asked, still milling around and looking at parts of the room. She seemed taken with the very minimalist couches. They were the kind that looked as uncomfortably square as they felt. No give to the cushions, and that cheap polyester fabric that’d proudly display every fleck of lint on them. Definitely not a place that welcomed pets.

“Yeah, all the time. This is actually a pretty upscale one,” Ann said, walking around to take in the anaemic decorations. There were some pots that looked like they were intended to house plants, but had nothing inside.

“Definitely stone-shaped. Look over here!” Minnie called from a corner of the room.

As Ann clicked her way over, she saw what Minnie was talking about. A corner, unless it was plastered over, would have grout where the two slabs of stone met. This didn’t. It was just a sharp transition at a right angle. No signs of disguising a seam, either. It was just built like that.

“No seam at all. Means that this was definitely made by someone,” Minnie muttered. “I’m still trying to figure out how in the Hells this happened, though.” She pointed to a section of the wall where a massive chunk of natural stone surged forth and up into the ceiling.

“It is as if someone made the entire building incorporeal and pushed it down,” Bren posited, examining the natural intrusion. “This is far beyond magic we have nowadays. Sure, an archmage is a powerful creature, but… what are the odds that the same person did this? If they did, they used magic much like Skullo and their kin did before the Gods put limits on us.”

“What if someone was trying to re-make home?” Rosalyn wondered. “If it’s not entirely right, that’s definitely a memory.”

Ann looked over at the stairway and the ascending staircase. “Got a feeling we’ll figure that out as we climb. Don’t see a way down.”

Minnie tore her attention away from the corner. “Our target is above us, too. Gotta go up to get the Bultrite! That’s a fun thing about mining. You’re digging deep one minute, next you’re climbing an underground cliff into a lofty cavern above you! So much neat geography down here. Come on!”

Ann shrugged off a bemused look from Kat as Minnie sped for the staircase.

“She’s got rocks fer brains, but in a good way,” Kat whispered low enough that only the sensitive of hearing could pick it up. “Never seen someone so fascinated wit’ a corner.”

“Me neither, but this whole place is interesting. Glad she’s having fun.”

“Don’t ferget the warnin’. We take doors first. She stays behind,” Kat whispered. “Oi!” she shouted. “Minnie, back o’ the feckin’ line! Don’t need ye in a trap!”

“Ope! You’re right, sorry!” Minnie apologised. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waited impatiently for everyone else to get there.

Ann craned her neck to see up the small rectangular gap at the centre of the stairwell. It went up past where she could count, and there were obstructions, but she could see about ten stories from here. Definitely a high-rise. “How far up was the Bultrite?”

“Bout two hundred, three hundred feet?” Minnie said.

“So about thirty stories. Great! Gonna be a fun time here. I think I see rocks in the way about ten stories up, Kat.”

“Then we either go through that, or find another way up. Ye think this place’ll ‘ave more stairs?” Kat asked, joining Ann to take a look.

“Depends. Fire code says that there have to be two at least. Something this ritzy has to have more than one. Still, the memory crap.”

“Aye, makes things difficult.”

“I suggest we climb and figure it out as we go,” Bren sighed. “Perhaps one of the rooms will have an open roof we can get through?”

Ann bit back that she wasn’t hopeful about that prospect. If this was someone like her who’d made the building, floors, walls and ceilings being sturdy would be the first priority. At least it was mundane stone. No magical reinforcements besides the strange phasing.

The climb went smoothly. Stone bannisters were a lifesaver for Minnie and Bren, who didn’t have quite as much in the way of physical stats as the rest. Rosalyn’s Sure-Footed skill apparently helped her with this, too, and she breezed her way along the climb.

When they reached the first floor, they found the door to be either completely wedged shut or fake altogether. The knob still twisted, but the door didn’t actually move.

“Should we break it?” Kat asked.

Minnie walked up and placed an ear on the door, then knocked. “Nope. Solid for a good while. This is blocked off. Up we go!”

The next floor was a bust as well.

They actually got to get into the hallway on the third floor. It was… really normal if it wasn’t entirely rock. Somehow the furniture was the right materials, but the mage couldn’t spring for carpet? Ann’s claws were clicking so loudly she knew what Kat must feel like in all of that armour. Maybe she should get them trimmed. There were doors on the left and right, offset to allow space for the rooms behind them, and maybe a bit more for whatever in between the units. There were also keyholes. Every single door had another handle, a number engraved into the face, and a keyhole.

“Bren, those keys didn’t happen to have numbers, did they?” Ann asked.

A quick jangling later: “They do. These rooms are all numbered in the three hundreds. Was it common to have hundreds of rooms per floor?”

Ann had to pause to figure out why that’d be weird. “Oh! No, that’s an organisational thing. First floor starts with a 1, then you go up from there. We’d be third floor now, so these are three hundreds.”

“Why not use a dash system?” Bren asked, flicking through the keys. “One, dash, then the room number?”

Ann shrugged, looking at the numbers carved into a door. “I dunno. I figure that’d work pretty well, but I guess more people are used to this?”

“Not only that, but what happens when you pass ten floors?”

“I… wait, shouldn’t that mean these start with ten thousand and one and go up? Or like… what, zero one zero one?” Ann muttered. She was drawing a complete blank on how this would work. “Maybe they just keep the scheme, and it goes up to like one zero zero one at ten?”

“I believe we will confirm. Ah! Here is a key,” Bren said, holding up a key to room 308. “Shall we try?”

Kat took the key from him and clomped down the hallway. She was on edge, Ann could tell. Her shoulders were stiff, and her steps a little heavier than normal. Ann got it. She was worried too.

“Minnie, stay back, aye?” Kat said, stopping before 108.

Minnie nodded and retreated back to the door of 102.

Kat and Ann got up next to the door with their ranged friends backing them up.

Kat held up the hand holding her sword with three fingers up. Gently, she slid the key into the door and twisted. As soon as there was a click, she counted down from three, two, one.

Kat twisted the handle and threw open the door.

The two fighters burst into the room.